


Light on the Horizon

by Lady_in_Red



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, F/M, Hopeful Ending, One Shot, Pandemics, canon references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25272811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Six months ago, Brienne would have laughed if someone told her she'd be living in a mall, taking care of four kids and their teenage cousin, and friends with the president of Westeros' twin brother. It might be funny if the world wasn't falling apart around them.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 57
Kudos: 353





	Light on the Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> I know, it's a quarantine fic. Way back in March my husband and I were musing about where the government could set up extra hospital space, like they were doing at convention centers and parks in NYC. I remembered the dead mall a few miles away, and I started writing this.

A soldier’s heavy boots echoed down the main corridor, and every so often she’d hear a cough, quickly smothered, but otherwise the quiet held in this wing of the mall. Brienne had never been here when it was still open for business, but she’d become familiar with every hallway and shop in the weeks they’d been here under quarantine. The mattress store she shared with the Stark kids and Pod. Davos and Shireen’s bookmobile parked in the corridor by the movie theater. Sandor and his chickens in the old pet store. Jaime’s campsite in the sporting goods store. 

Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t escape, not with armed soldiers in mobile watch towers and dogs patrolling the vast parking lot. But there were plenty of places to hide, places where Brienne could throw things and scream or cry without frightening the children. 

She tried to concentrate on the children as she pulled down the security gate, locking them into the store for the night. She tucked in each child, then turned out the lights and settled into her bed, but Jaime’s words, spoken hours earlier, kept echoing in her head. 

“You’re lucky.” 

It was hard to feel lucky when Sansa’s quiet sobs woke her in the dark, when she could not bring herself to lie again that Jon and Rickon would return from the infirmary any day now. 

Brienne had followed him out of the food court after lunch, when she saw one of the guards slip him a letter. Only one person ever wrote to him, one of the few who could send mail along with the supply drops. There were perks to power and money, and no one had more money or power than Cersei Lannister. 

As always, Brienne had asked if there was news from outside the city. He knew what she meant. The local news ran all day in the old movie theater, but a backwater like Tarth never merited a mention when the situation in the capital was so dire. He’d promised to ask, more than once. This time, his face had paled, looking up from his letter, and he’d told her how lucky she was to still have hope. It felt like a punch to the gut, the lowest of blows. 

Brienne and her father had been estranged for years, and she’d heard no word of the island since the early days of the stonelung outbreak. The one small hospital in Evenfall would have been overwhelmed quickly. She could only hope her father had had the sense to retreat to his hunting cabin in the mountains, where he could live safely in isolation for months.

Brienne lay quiet for a while longer. She’d stopped wearing her watch. It didn’t really matter if it was 10:45 or 2:38. It was dark. She should be resting. Tomorrow would come when it wished, as it had come every day they’d been here. Arya insisted on scratching a mark into the wall above her bed every day. A little forest of tick marks in the drywall. 

Eventually Brienne rolled off her mattress and got up, grateful that her foam mattress had no springs to squeak. The girls were tucked against one wall, Bran and Pod against the other. It was easy to slip back into her shoes and out the back door of the store that had become their home. Into the dark corridor with its flickering security lights, the warren of tunnels and service corridors that linked the bright shops and had allowed goods and garbage alike to come and go without customers ever seeing a thing. Now this corridor offered her a brief respite, an hour or so to drop the smile and false optimism she needed to get through each day with the children.

She passed six doors before she stopped and ducked into a narrow hallway with a water fountain and two bathrooms. She did her business quickly, then fished a key out of her shirt, where it hung from a long chain around her neck. The key fit a heavy steel door at one end of the hall. NO ADMITTANCE was scrawled in red paint across the door, but Brienne ignored that and opened the door just wide enough to slip through the gap and close it behind her. The lock clicked in place with a satisfying thunk. 

Up the concrete stairs, her footsteps echoing in the stairwell, past the glowing red light on the second floor landing, her eyes adjusting to the gloom as she climbed. These stairs were familiar by now, as was the frigid draft coming from the top of the stairwell. A shaft of light led her up, up, onto the final landing and past the door held open with a chunk of cinderblock. 

The roof was nearly level here, away from the skylights that ran the length of the mall interior. Ahead, only about 30 feet of flat roof ran straight to the edge of the massive building. Beyond lay an almost entirely unobstructed view of King’s Landing. They never dared come out here in daylight, but they kept camp chairs hidden out of sight along with piles of spare blankets. 

Jaime had dragged one of the chairs over to a spot halfway to the edge. Little puffs of smoke rose from his dim silhouette, slumped in his chair and wrapped in an old duvet. A beanie cap was jammed on his head, hiding his shaggy hair, but she knew his posture, the careless sprawl of his long legs.

He held a bottle of wine in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other. He wouldn’t be good company. He wouldn’t apologize for what he’d said earlier. He would in all likelihood be a real shit about the whole thing. 

But she didn’t blame him. Not when she could see the green glow on the horizon to the south, in the heart of King’s Landing. His sister was there, acting president of Westeros. She’d seized power a month earlier, filling the void left when her husband died suddenly and the council was still scattered in their kingdoms in quarantine. 

Brienne grabbed a chair and a cold blanket and stepped carefully across the frosty roof to set herself up beside him. Once she was seated and wrapped as tightly in her blanket nest as possible, Jaime offered her the wine. He didn’t even look, just held out the bottle. 

“No, thanks.”

He did look, then, and jammed the wine bottle between his legs so he could transfer the cigarette from his right hand to his left. He offered the cigarette to her as well. The clove scent was oddly comforting. Her father had been fond of them years ago. 

“I don’t smoke,” she reminded him.

Jaime grunted and took a long drag before carefully stubbing it out and pocketing the butt to finish later. “That’s your problem, Tarth. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t fuck.” He smiled at her, eyes bleary, mouth not quite able to hold onto a sneer. 

“You know I don’t.” 

His gaze focused for a moment, his voice softer than it had any right to be. “If you ever change your mind, you know where I am.” He’d offered to fuck her early on, when they barely knew each other’s names. He kept offering, usually on the bad nights, when it felt like the quarantine would never end. At some point it had stopped feeling like a threat and become a temptation. He knew it, too. They circled one another during the day, catching each other’s eyes along the corridors, brushing hands as they passed in the food court at meals. 

Coming up here was part of it too. Jaime had started it, found the key, slowly moved supplies up here at night when the guards weren’t paying as much attention to them. But it wasn’t all play. As much as they both needed fresh air and quiet, Jaime often came here to punish himself. Early on, he’d promoted the party line that stonelung was nothing to fear, no worse than the old greyscale doctors now treated easily much of the time. He was wrong, and it seemed he would never forgive himself for that.

Still, tempting as his offers always were now, Brienne turned him down every time. “I have kids to think of, Jaime.” She kept her voice gentle, but she still saw him stiffen. He’d had kids to think of too when they first came here.

“You’re not their mother.” It was an old argument, wearing thinner each time he used it. 

“I’m not their mother,” she agreed. “But their mother put them in my care, and that makes them mine for as long as they need me.” 

Brienne had been living in the northern suburbs of King’s Landing only a few months when the outbreak began. Her apartment over the garage of a much larger family home had been a gift from the Seven. In exchange for reduced rent, she babysat the Stark children a couple evenings a week. When her landlady called, frantic, stuck at her eldest’s soccer tournament when the borders closed and the shelter in place order went into effect, Brienne of course asked how she could help. Catelyn Stark’s nanny was ill, her nephew was too young to legally sign them out, and there was no one else to pick up the kids from school. Could Brienne get them and help her nephew watch them for a few days until Catelyn could make it back? 

Of course, Brienne had agreed and set out for the school. It hadn’t been easy, and she must have told a hundred staff members who she was looking for and why they should release unrelated children into her care. Jaime, there to pick up his niece and nephew, had stepped in to insist the school release the Stark children. He’d embarrassed Brienne, this stranger throwing his weight around and bullying the staff, but she’d grudgingly had to thank him when the school let her take the kids. 

And then Catelyn and Robb, like most of those quarantined at the Twins, had died from stonelung. The four youngest Stark children, along with their cousin Jon, had been with Brienne ever since, first at the Stark home and then here at the Winterfell Mall, once the government ran out of room to house the sick and started quarantining the healthy instead. 

“What about Pod?” Jaime countered.

Brienne barked a laugh and quickly smothered it. If the soldiers in the parking lot heard her, they could lose their little haven in the fresh air. “Jaime, you brought him to me.”

“Well, he couldn’t stay with me,” he grumbled, scratching awkwardly at his knit cap. Pod was a thin, stuttering child who’d arrived at the mall entirely alone and tried to set up a tent in a corner of Jaime’s store, where he’d felt safe surrounded by stuffed elk heads mounted on the walls and a bow far too big for his scrawny arms to draw tucked beside him. A bow wouldn’t save him from stonelung, but no one had the heart to point that out. Jaime had nudged the boy in Brienne’s direction, and before she knew it she had another child in her care.

She could have reminded Jaime that the children adored him, that she saw the empathy he buried under humor and arrogance. But he knew. Of course he knew. He preferred to hide behind the image people had of him, the pampered scion of a wealthy family. The asshole who laughed and smirked his way through this tragedy without letting it touch him. 

“I was an ass. Earlier. More than usual.” Jaime apologized so rarely it was strange to hear him try.

“You were,” she agreed, but now, looking at the sickly green glow on the southern horizon and recalling the way the guards had gathered tonight, whispering in small groups, uncharacteristically quiet, she couldn’t hold it against him. She reached out and gently touched his forearm. “What happened? I’ll hear it tomorrow. You might as well tell me now.”

Jaime took a long swig from the bottle of wine, leaving his lips wet and red. “Cersei blew up the Great Sept in the middle of a service for the afflicted.”

All the breath left Brienne’s body on a startled cry. No. Surely not. The researchers were getting closer to a treatment, they understood how stonelung was transmitted now. It might be safe to come out of hiding by the end of the year. “Why?” was all she could manage with the tiny breath she could draw. Her chest felt like it was caught in a vise. The Great Sept could hold a thousand people, and this outbreak had brought many back to the Faith, desperate to make sense of what was happening. 

Jaime turned and looked at her, eyes shiny. He wasn’t nearly as drunk as she’d first thought. “To contain the spread of the disease. For the greater good. That’s the official line.” His voice had never been more sarcastic, his sneer more poisonous. “What really happened is that the High Septon was speaking against her, and people were starting to listen. So she detonated a cache of wildfire beneath the Sept.” 

Jaime had never liked the High Septon. He had little use for the Faith in general, but the High Septon was a charismatic leader whose extreme views had taken root among the frightened and angry citizens of Westeros. Even Brienne, who believed wholeheartedly in the Seven, found his sermons dangerously overzealous. 

Before Brienne could find words to comfort him, Jaime continued. “Tommen was inside.” 

She expected him to break, to rage into the night, but Jaime only stared into the dark, lips trembling, eyes damp with tears he wouldn’t allow to fall. Emotion was weakness, and Lannisters were not weak. The world according to Tywin Lannister.

Brienne took the bottle, drank deeply from it, the dryness lingering on her tongue, and tucked it beside her. She took his hand before she could overthink it, lacing their fingers together. His hand was like ice. 

Brienne hadn’t known Tommen long, the boy had only been here two weeks, perhaps a little longer, before Cersei Lannister ordered him returned to her. The soldiers took him away one night while Jaime was gone. Myrcella was already sick by then, and Jaime had refused to leave her alone so he was away in the infirmary wing. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to say goodbye to the boy. 

After several minutes had passed in silence, Jaime said quietly, “I should have stopped her.” 

“How?” She squeezed his hand. “We’re stuck here. You can’t blame yourself for that.” They’d talked about escaping, idly, but it was all fantasy. There was nowhere to go. North of the Wall? To Tarth? There was no telling where they would be safe. 

Jaime shook his head. “She sent me a pass. To go back to her. Begged me, said she needed me. Said she loved me and I had to save her.” 

Brienne stilled, her breath puffing out in uneven clouds of vapor in the night air. “When?”

He shivered and burrowed deeper in his coat. “Last week.”

Last week, when Rickon had started to cough and she’d spent every waking moment quietly treating his symptoms and trying to keep the soldiers away, hoping that grey tinge would never color his lips, praying ceaselessly to the Mother to protect him, that this was just a passing cold and not stonelung. 

She’d dragged herself up here every night, while Jon kept watch over the kids, and cried to Jaime about it, knowing he understood like no one else could. And all that time, he had a pass and could have returned safely to the Red Keep. Returned to Tommen, who’d cried every night he was separated from Jaime and Myrcella. But also returned to Cersei, and their toxic and co-dependent relationship. 

“You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault.” She tried to keep her voice steady, but between the cold and the dread of his response, she was shaking. She knocked over the wine bottle, its muted thump too quiet for the guards to hear, but the rich, fermented fruit smell of the spilled liquor made her stomach turn. 

“No? She  _ begged  _ me to come back. I knew she was desperate, and I stayed away. And Tommen died.” Self-loathing roughened his voice.

He wouldn’t listen in this state of mind, not soaked in wine and grief. “Come back with me tonight,” she offered. “We have plenty of beds. You shouldn’t be alone.”

A bitter laugh choked out of him until he stifled it. “I can’t be around those kids right now.”

“Mother’s mercy, of course not. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Brienne squeezed his hand again, wishing she could do more. 

“You know I barely knew him before we came here. I only saw them on holidays. Their mother’s doing, but I could have pushed back. I could have tried.” Jaime sounded so disgusted with himself, so disappointed in things he could not change. 

“He loved you. So did Myrcella. You did everything you could for them, and you were there when it counted,” Brienne reminded him. Those kids had worshipped Jaime. They liked his sense of humor, his fearlessness around the guards, his utter lack of filter. All the things that had irritated Brienne so much when they first met.

Jaime shook his head. “I could have gone back. I could have protected him there.” 

Brienne didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “Then why didn’t you?”

He hesitated, turning his face up to the night sky. Even in the harsh sodium yellow light from the parking lot, he was beautiful. She only vaguely remembered what he looked like in sunlight. Brienne had only seen him like that once, outside the kids’ school, when she’d thanked him for his help and he’d joked about finding it amusing to subvert expectations. He’d looked like the Warrior that day, her golden hero in a three-piece suit. There was daylight in the mall, but the light that filtered in through the skylights felt cold by comparison, and the security lights at night made everyone sallow and cast strange shadows.

Jaime kept his face turned away when he finally answered. “I just… I couldn’t leave you any more than you could leave me.” 

Her breath caught in her chest. Early on, there had been talk of moving some of the larger family groups to another shelter farther from King’s Landing. Jaime would have been left behind with Tommen and Myrcella. Even then they’d resisted separation. Even when he drove her insane every time they talked, even when he seemed determined to infuriate her with every word.

Only later did Brienne realize that she couldn’t be scared when she was angry. If she was focused on Jaime’s latest asshole comment or his obnoxious hoard of supplies, then she couldn’t fixate on the rising death counts from the city or how very small their lives had become, trapped inside this mall. And he’d known that all along.

“I should get back to the store,” Brienne mumbled, and he finally looked at her, a small rueful smile on his face, as if he knew exactly what she would say, or not say. Maybe he did.

Whatever was between them, it only worked unspoken. The barest touch here and there, comfort drawn from a shared look or a shared drink late at night. He could tease, he could tempt, but she couldn’t accept. If she let him touch her, let him inside, and it all flamed out as it surely would, Brienne didn’t think she could get through it. The world was on fire. She couldn’t be too. She had four children to protect, five if the Mother would send Rickon back to her. She hadn’t heard anything about him or Jon since they went to the infirmary. Jon was supposed to come right back, but he hadn’t returned. If Jon was sick too, she’d never forgive herself.

Jaime understood the pressure she was under, and didn’t push her for more. Not now. Maybe she should feel bad about that, how easily he backed down, but she was too grateful for it. It was harder to keep her distance the more he showed her the soft vulnerable parts beneath his prickly arrogant exterior. 

Brienne helped him move the chairs back to their hiding place and followed behind as they picked their way slowly down the stairs. The stairwell safety lights had started burning out and no one was changing the bulbs since no one was supposed to be using the stairs. The service hallways at least were well maintained, but they echoed and the lights flickered. In darker moments Brienne thought she must be locked in a nightmare, wandering haunted halls waiting for something terrible to jump out at her. 

Jaime hesitated outside the back door of his store. He was one of the few who still had a store all to himself, though others had stripped much of the useful supplies out of it. The thought of Jaime alone in the dark, beating himself up for Tommen’s death, made her heart hurt. 

Impulsively, she pulled him into a tight hug. Jaime’s arms wrapped around her, his face buried in the crook of her shoulder. They stood like that, bodies fitting together solidly from hip to shoulder. He was still far too cold, he must have been out on the roof for a long time. She rubbed up and down his back, trying to warm him. 

“Come in,” he huffed against her skin, making her shiver. 

“Stop that,” she grumbled. 

“Why?” He rubbed his scruffy cheek against her throat. 

“I can’t.” If the kids woke up alone, she didn’t know what they’d do. They were still so easily frightened. Bran had nightmares.

Jaime pulled back just enough to look at her. “Please.” 

Her throat felt so tight she couldn’t speak, just shook her head. 

Jaime drew away abruptly, fumbling with his keys and unlocking the door with jerky motions. “Goodnight, then,” he said without looking back at her. He yanked the heavy door open and stalked through.

As it slowly closed, Brienne impulsively grabbed the handle, keeping it open just a crack. 

This was stupid. She should go. Let him go, let whatever spark existed between them die. But, Father forgive her, she was so tired. The kids were sweet and funny and needed her so desperately she often felt empty by the time they fell asleep. Spending time with Jaime filled her up again. 

Of course Cersei Lannister had realized her mistake in leaving him behind and tried to fetch her brother back from his exile. He was, in his way, the Warrior for those he loved. He lent his strength, his conviction, even put his life on the line if need be. And Cersei Lannister needed that. Even Brienne knew that forces within the government had opposed her leadership from the start. A pandemic wouldn’t stop them from dragging her down if they wanted it badly enough. If there was anything Brienne knew about Westerosi politics, it was that some people would seize any opportunity to build their power, no matter the consequences. 

In the dim space beyond the door, Brienne could hear movement, and then a weak light sparked from the left. She’d heard a lot of rumors about Jaime’s stockpile at the back of his store, but she’d never seen it. 

Brienne had only passed by, walking down the central mall corridor. From the front of the store, mostly empty shelves marched back in ranks until they met a long row of shelving topped with kayaks, inflatable pool toys, and coolers. The only entrance was blocked with a small tent where Jaime met with people to barter his supplies for whatever he needed. Brienne had never needed to ask him for anything. He brought gifts now and then, including fever relief medicines for the children, and the occasional sleeping pill for her. She’d stopped trying to thank him early on, as it only seemed to annoy him. 

Brienne took a deep, steadying breath. She glanced left and right, wondering if anyone else was out and about right now. The silence around her seemed to say no. 

Jaime said he’d stayed for her, perhaps reasoning that Brienne needed him more than his sister did. And Tommen had paid the price. Would he leave, then? He had a pass, after all. Why wouldn’t he go, when he knew how unstable his sister had become, when he could help calm her? 

She yanked the door further open and stepped inside before she could second guess herself, and carefully closed the door behind her lest it slam and announce her presence to half the mall. 

Inside was still dim, light cast from an utterly contraband gas-powered fire pit. The massive tent beside it, meant for an entire family, was no surprise. Neither was the hammock swinging from a metal stand. There was a modest but extremely comfortable bed inside that tent. She knew because he’d picked it out from her store and swore and complained as he and Jon lugged it through the back hallways to get it here. 

His stash was a surprise. Not its existence, of course. She’d seen so many people walking out of his store clutching bags that definitely weren’t full of hiking boots and bug spray. Liquor and cigarettes and medicines looted from a drugstore in the mall when the first group of evacuees were brought here. Cookies, candy, batteries, skincare and hair dye, beautiful smelling soaps. Little luxuries the government wasn’t inclined to provide and necessities not easily available due to shortages. 

But none of that was here. An open case of wine bottles, a few boxes of chocolates and some crates of over-the-counter medication, nothing like the vast dragon hoard she’d been led to believe he had. The goods took up only a small corner of the space. 

He had fairy lights strung around the doorway of his tent. It looked more like a backyard fort than the lair of a pirate king. 

Jaime himself was lounging in his hammock, his shoes and jacket already gone. He was watching her far more intently than his relaxed posture would indicate. “Not what you were expecting?” 

“I thought there’d be more, you know, stuff.” Her face was heating up, irritation at her own awkwardness coursing through her. 

“There was. And now just about everyone here, including the guards, owes me a favor.” He winked. For all the time they’d spent together, Brienne still wasn’t entirely certain of him. Some days she thought she understood Jaime perfectly, but other days she wondered. 

“Even me.” Not just for helping her retrieve the children from their school that first day. Brienne still had nightmares about waking up with a gun barrel in her face. Two nights after she learned that Catelyn and Robb were dead, the military had broken into the Stark house and given her twenty minutes to pack a suitcase for each child. They’d been herded onto buses and sent first to the high school for medical testing, and then on to the mall. Bran had gone into a sort of catatonic state, clutching his Hodor doll and refusing to move. She’d had to carry him everywhere. The soldiers had tried to separate her from the children when they arrived at the mall. Jaime had intervened then too. 

He got out of the hammock and moved slowly toward her. “So what, you’re here to pay me back?”

“No.” The only light was behind him, and Brienne desperately needed to see his face. “Or maybe I should, before you leave.”

Jaime rolled his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, Brienne. I burned the damned pass.”

She smacked him in the shoulder. “Idiot! Why would you do that?”

He fell back a step, rubbing his shoulder. “It was a pass for one.”

“So?” she snapped. It was beyond insane to burn that pass. As familiar as this mall had become, it was a prison. Armed guards kept them inside, and they had no idea when they’d be allowed to leave. 

“So I thought we were in this together,” Jaime shot back.

“You were desperate to get back to your sister,” Brienne sputtered. “Even after she took Tommen.” She’d never told him just how awful that night had been. He’d been through enough with Myrcella’s death. But losing Tommen had been awful. Soldiers had burst in late at night. Real soldiers, not the usual guards. They’d shone bright lights into the store, frightening the children so badly that Tommen had peed himself and Brienne had to hurriedly help him change before they left. He’d asked her to look after Jaime and Myrcella until they could join him, his soft voice so certain that they would be reunited. 

Jaime started to speak but stopped. He shook his head. “I should want to leave, shouldn’t I? But I don’t.” He shook his head. “What kind of man abandons his family while the world is falling apart?” 

Brienne couldn’t hold back anymore. She moved slowly toward him, waiting to be rebuffed, but it didn’t come. She wrapped her arms around him, and Jaime clutched her tight. “You can’t only live for your family. They wouldn’t want you to,” she murmured.

“Clearly you’ve never met them.” 

“The Seven have kept you safe when so many others are not. Don’t you think that means something?” She had to believe there was a greater plan at work, because otherwise the future looked far too bleak.

He was quiet a long moment, his thumb moving back and forth against her back, a slow caress. “It means I’m rich, and I have connections. That’s all.” 

“So cynical,” she chided. “I was living above Catelyn’s garage. By your logic I shouldn’t be here at all.”

Jaime huffed against her skin. “You have connections. You have me, for whatever that’s worth now.”

Brienne pulled out of his grasp, unable to give voice to the question on her lips. 

Something of the words must have shown on her face. His confusion softened. “You do. I swear it.” Jaime sounded so sincere, so certain, it was hard to accept. 

No words could encompass her gratitude for all he’d done for her, or the debt she owed him, or the pain she’d felt every time he talked about his beloved tyrant of a sister. Brienne wouldn’t make him swear to stay with her, wouldn’t hold him to promises made when he was grieving. She wasn’t Cersei. 

He reached toward her, his hand lightly cupping Brienne’s cheek as he looked unwaveringly into her eyes. “I swear it,” he said again, soft, his breath warm on her skin. 

And then Jaime’s lips touched hers, and the endless worries and fears that whirled in her mind like a tornado stopped, the two of them the eye of the storm. She sighed into the kiss, the acrid taste of wine fading as his lips moved over hers so gently. Brienne parted her lips and met his tongue with hers, and then she was surging forward, pressing her body to his. 

Jaime walked them backward, toward his tent and through the flaps, tumbling them both onto his bed. She’d been numb for so long, carrying so much fear and worry that she no longer felt their weight. But now every sensation lit up her nerves, demanding her attention. 

Brienne took everything he offered greedily, tossing her insecurities away along with her clothes. She hadn’t let down her guard in so long, but something in his green eyes, sparkling in the dimness of his tent, made her feel safe. Whatever came tomorrow, tonight was a world apart. They were alive and together and whole, and she was so tired of pretending that she didn’t want him. 

Neither spoke in the aftermath, breath slowing and skin cooling until Jaime reached behind her to grab a blanket to throw over them both. He drew Brienne back into his arms and just held her. Maybe neither of them needed words. 

After a while, Brienne forced herself out of bed. Dressing took longer than it should have, with Jaime insisting on kissing or touching each patch of skin she tried to cover up. He hurriedly dressed too, took her hand and walked with her back to her store. 

It should have been silent inside, and for a moment Brienne’s heart fell to hear the children talking inside. If they woke up alone, did they wonder where she was? Did they think she’d been taken? Regret and shame poured through her. She couldn’t even look at Jaime as she fished her keys from her pocket and unlocked the door. 

The lights were on inside, the children jumping on their beds, and Brienne was about to start yelling at them when she spotted Jon.

And Rickon. 

The Mother had heard her. He looked thin and wan, dark circles under his eyes, but Rickon was right there in front of her. 

A wordless cry broke from her lips and she dropped Jaime’s hand to run toward Rickon. The boy put up with her probably bone crushing hug, and stood patiently while she looked him over. Brienne stared intently at his lips, back to their normal pink instead of a dusty grey. 

Brienne looked up at Jon. “How?” 

Jon shrugged and smiled. “They said it was a new treatment.” He looked exhausted too, his jaw covered with patchy scruff, still wearing the same clothes he’d left in. She’d need to get the full story later, when the children weren’t around. Arya leaped from her bed onto his back, and he nearly fell over from her weight but he started laughing anyway.

She loosed her hold on Rickon and backed away, letting the other kids come up and smother him in hugs.

A hand fell on her shoulder, and Brienne glanced back to find Jaime still there. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to. He’d have given anything for Tommen to be here tonight. She leaned in and impulsively kissed him. 

Sansa made a gagging noise behind them, but Brienne ignored her. Her cheeks were hot when she pulled back, but Jaime seemed pleased. He took her hand and followed her as the kids all gathered on one of the big beds to hear Jon and Rickon tell their story. 

Brienne and Jaime sat together on the next bed, curled up together listening. Their long night wasn’t over, but perhaps there was light on the horizon. 

  
  



End file.
